Thanks for the detailed explanation.
I was hoping this whole exercise would be something like the lego mindstorms kit with a chip and 4 motors and sensors sticking out like medusa's head and all i have to do would be to write a few lines of code ... but this is like going back to school all over again
Nonetheless, I'll see the project through.
This might sound silly but I'm making a cat food dispenser so I can monitor how much he's eating, get pics/snapshots, etc when we're away from home. That way we can go to our website and see a log of how much he has eaten along with his meal time snapshots.
This is what I understood from your suggestions..
- I need to get the AVR Butterfly (~$20) that will work as the microcontroller
- I need actuator-servos for the motor. Not clear with this one. The description on your link says that the servos are not used for 360 degree rotation but for precision movement. So is that not a problem since I need my motors to rotate for X number of seconds each clockwise and then counterclockwise for a fixed period of time. Also, for four 12v dc motors, do you suggest I get 4 servos or 1 motor controller? In some pictures servos are shown as chips and others as motors. So can you please recommend a particular product. I already have a bunch of 12v motors.
- For the electromagnet, is there not a prebuilt device that I can stick to the microcontroller? What specification mosfat would you recommend?
Thanks for all your help,
Raza